Aug 03 2012
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Articles, Newton

The invariably poor advice of Isaac Newton – Part 1

It is little known that Isaac Newton, in addition to discovering Gravity and describing the laws of motion, worked for the Cambridge Advertiser as an agony uncle. His column was feared lost until recent research discovered this trove of material in Steven Hawking’s fridge.

March 1721

Dear Sir Isaac,

I am writing to you for your most revered advice. My wife has noticed that I am beginning to go quite bald, only 20 years ago I had a full luxurious head of hair and now I have but six hairs left on my scalp. My wife has taken to mentioning this to me on a regular basis and find this is affecting my stature around the home. My wife has the most foul breath, should I mention this to her to try and strike a balance? Or is there a way, using your science, to restore my bonce to it’s earlier state?

Yours,

Jeremiah Killkerry

 
Jeremiah,

I read with despair the report of the calamitous situation you find yourself in. In fact when I read your missive, I fell into a reverie so deep that I was 20 minutes late to luncheon.

My first thought was to utilise the hairs that remain on your scalp, I engaged a young man who works in the kitchen in a practical experiment. I first bade him capture 6 bats from the clock tower of the college, we then fastened the bats to six of the hairs on his head and then frightened them. The hope was that the bats would pull more hair out from within the head thus enabling the production of a hair weave. However the bats merely broke free, and one of them also bit him, and thus I do not recommend this solution except in extremis.

I have since asked the lad to hang upside down for the last 6 weeks. I have discovered this wonderful life force which I call gravity, I was hoping that this will pull hair out of his head, however it does seem to have killed him, so again I cannot wholeheartedly recommend this treatment.

However this did lead me to thinking about a solution to all of your problems. If you suggest to your wife that she clean her foul mouth out with drain cleaner it will likely freshen her breath and permanently end her complaining. Although my editor insists that you consult with your physician before “cleaning” your wife.

Yours,

Newton.

Aug 02 2012
5 Comments
Articles, Questions

What have you practiced for the longest?

What with Gamboling coming back, I’m mindful that I’ve been doing Gamboling on and off for about 9 years now*. I have however been writing since I was a kid. Katherine knits, some people play the piano. I learned to play the piano when I was a kid, I studied for seven years, and now all of these years later all I can play is Three Blind Mice – badly.

I think I’ll have to pick writing. You could easily say that I am a terrible writer, which people might think would be upsetting for me considering how long I’ve spent on it. But the key difference with writing more than anything else I’ve done is that I clearly need to do it. So I may as well try and improve along the way – and there’s a long way to go.

What have you practiced for the longest?

* Since September 2003

Jul 30 2012
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Articles

It’s the exception that proves the rule

I’m sure you’ve heard some dolt say this line, “well you know it’s the exception that proves the rule”, you may even have been said dolt – I know I have been.

i before e except after c

Although we were all probably taught this at school, most people now know that it isn’t true. In fact, in more cases it’s the other way around. In many more words it is i before e after c too. But this is still trotted out as a common example of the exception proving the rule.

But this isn’t what the phrase “it’s the exception that proves the rule” is supposed to mean. Lots of people seem to think it’s a kind of shorthand for “we’ve looked into this properly because we aren’t just telling you what’s generally true, but about the exceptions too”, a kind of grown up version of showing your working. And showing your working is important, and to be encouraged, but that isn’t what it’s about.

The phrase actually dates back to Roman times*. In a court case a dude was trying to become a Roman Citizen, the only problem was that he was from one of the provinces. The lawyer who opposed his case pointed out that several other provinces had restrictions on allowing people from provinces to become Roman citizens so a general rule could be inferred that people from the provinces shouldn’t be allowed to become Roman citizens. Cicero, who was the dude’s lawyer, argued that this was faulty logic. He said that instead, the fact that particular provinces had restrictions in place inferred that there must be a general rule to which these were the exceptions. He was saying the fact there was an exception proves that there was a general rule that people could come in. The existence of an exception, indicated that there was a general rule. That’s what the phrase is supposed to mean.

* What doesn’t these days?

Jul 27 2012
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Fauxbituary, Fiction

Fauxbituary #1 – Algernon Q Fuzzbutter

Algernon Q Fuzzbutter
1908 – 2012

Algernon Q Fuzzbutter, the inventor of the oversized mattress label, died on Thursday peacefully in his bed. Fuzzbutter would, his family said in a prepared statement they had prepared earlier, have appreciated the irony of his place of death. “Dad was always in bed, even when he wasn’t confined to it,” said Sarah Munt, his daughter (63), “as far back as I can remember he kinda lived in there.”

“Perhaps,” said Arthur Scofield, a formerly disgruntled employee who has reconsidered his opinion of his former employer in light of his death, “he went there to dream? He certainly dreamed up some kooky ideas we had to implement over the years”. Indeed he did, Fuzzbutter had 73 and a half patents to his name, but not one of the devices, contraptions or aides ever caught on as well as the oversized mattress label.

In an interview with this publication back in 1932 he spoke about the genesis of the idea, “It just occurred to me, the labels they were putting on these mattresses were about the same size as the labels in a shirt, or a pair of bloomers, but the mattress is much larger than these other items, so why not have a label commensurate with the larger size of the object in question?” He also revealed in the interview that he hoped one day to add large labels to cars and even refrigerators, but alas he was unable to live to see his dream become a reality.

Algernon Q Fuzzbutter is survived.

Jul 25 2012
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Art, Articles

Artist in training – Part 1

People sometimes ask me, how do you have time to do all of these things? I tend to tell them that the answer is that a) a lot of things take a lot less time to do than you’d think, b) mainly it’s by just getting on and doing them, and c) practice.

I think a lot of people say, “oh I would like to be good at such an such” but don’t do anything about it because doing something about it would take a nebulous amount of time. I always think, I’d like to be good at this in about x years, gosh that’s not very long, I better start practicing if I’m going to be ready by then.

I’ve always been a little self-conscious about my poor ability with art (performance art I’m ok with). And as Nina grows up I’d like to be better at drawing and painting. So I think that over the next five years I’d like to be able to become competent at drawing and painting. There’s only one way to do this, practice.

So here’s the first picture I’ve created since I was at school:

It was done on the iPad so you can actually see a recording of how the painting* was constructed using the excellent app Brushes.

*Is it a painting? Is it a drawing? It feels more like you are drawing a painting?

Jul 23 2012
2 Comments
Articles

What’s Latin for Alien?

I can remember sitting in class squirming with excitement for first break. My three best friends at that school were all in the year above and when they saw this they were going to think it was so cool. I can remember finding Pete and Rich, but I can’t think where David was that day. We went to one of our usual haunts, the top of the fire escape at the back of the school gym*. This sounds like a nice out of the way spot, but it wasn’t totally hidden. My school had two quads** – an upper quad and a lower quad. The upper quad was between all of the classrooms so was not very useful for break times, sure you might hang around in there from time to time, but with all the teachers looking on it wasn’t much fun. Also with all of the windows on the classrooms there were strictly no ball games, the lower quad was where all the serious playing went on. The two quads were separated by the gym, and the fire escape faced the path between the two quads, so a lot of kids would walk past, but most wouldn’t notice us up there on the fire escape. But we could watch them.

Once we were safely up in our spot, I was ready to show Pete and Rich my treasure. I had found it on the window sill of my bedroom that very morning. Proof of the existence of Aliens.

It was a yellow pad of paper, with the hard cardboard back, the thick binding at the top so that you could rip the pages off. Most of the pages had been ripped off and the pad had been left, blank, on the window sill the night before. But now there was a diagram, a schematic for something on the page. I explained the situation, showed them what I had found, and said breathlessly “this drawing must have been beamed down from space on to the page”. They agreed, that much was clear and certain to our eleven year old minds.

What would we do next with this discovery? We must consult the authorities. But, I reasoned, we would have to be careful as there must be a reason that diagram was beamed to us rather than to the prime minister – to me the prime minister seemed the most likely alternative recipient.

Just then our Latin teacher came walking past on the path at the bottom of the stairs. We called down to her and ran down the stairs, “Miss Cooper, Miss Cooper”. She stopped and looked to see what we had to show her. The diagram, she agreed with us readily, could easily be alien, but had we considered the ancient Egyptians? I pointed out that the paper had been left on a window sill and behind the curtains, therefore leaving a direct line to outer space. Aliens, I reasoned, had to be the prime candidates.

This might all seem pretty strange to you, but Miss Cooper was very happy to believe our story. She once brought dowsing rods into school to check if there were lay lines in our classroom which might explain some of the poor marks people were getting. Frankly, if you weren’t cultivating a good number of eccentric habits then I don’t think you were allowed to teach at the school.

The next step was clear, I needed to show this drawing to my father, he knew about electronics and making things, he would be the next step to understanding what the Aliens wanted us to do.

I showed it to him that night and he thanked me for returning his drawing, he’d wondered where he had misplaced it. He didn’t seem very worried for a man who was suddenly in possession of international*** state secrets. But maybe he was just playing things cool in case I was working for the Prime Minister.

* You may be wondering why a school gym had a fire escape, I mean it wasn’t as if it was series of running machines on top of a Yates Wine Lodge. The gym had a stage at one end and that was, of course, elevated, so needed a fire escape.

** A quad is the name at posho schools, like what I went to, for a quadrilateral playground, which of course you might think means all playgrounds. What do you mean you’ve never heard of playgrounds in a pentagonal shape? Only kidding, I think the quadrilateral part was to distinguish it from more natural grass-based playing fields. I mean you might think it’s ridiculous, but most people have to make do with just the word playground to mean both a space with swings in it and an empty rectangle of concrete where they could play at school. We just called the later a quad.

*** Or Galactic.

Jul 23 2012
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Admin, Articles

What’s the deal with this gamboling blog then anyway?

“What’s the deal with this gamboling blog then anyway?”

So yes, on and off for many years I have periodically updated this blog in fits and bursts. Sometimes I have written a new piece every day including weekends. Sometimes I haven’t. Not all of the archive is still in place due to a problem, and eventually I will go back and fix this, but I’ve been saying that for a while.

“So is gamboling back?”

Well I’ve probably said that over the years more times than I would care to remember.

“But this time is different right?”

Um, probably not. I mean I’ll stop again, but that’s what you want really – how on earth could I keep you interested if I wasn’t interested?

“Ok, so not different?”

Well a little different. This time I have built up a buffer. So if I don’t write anything at all from the point that I publish this post you’ll have a month of stuff, not a month of every day stuff but a month of stuff with enough frequency you might be able to keep up, but that it doesn’t seem sporadic.

“So why not just publish one of these things instead of writing a thing about why you haven’t written anything?”

YOU AREN’T THE BOSS OF ME! No I didn’t mean that. Well I thought I better explain what was going on.

“Ok, so you’re back, what kind of gamboling phase is this going to be?”

The mixed bag phase, with features, articles, fiction. Things like “Reasons to be Cheerful”, and the question for the comments will be back. There will be none of the ponderous thought pieces and more of the silly stuff. The cool thing is that there are ideas and features I’m really excited to introduce you to, and that hasn’t happened for a while.

“So when is this first article coming, why don’t you publish it already?”

It’ll be here in a an hour. It might already be here, if you haven’t been madly refreshing this semi-dormant site every five minutes for a year just in case something is published.

Hope you enjoy it,

Alex.

Nov 17 2011
1 Comment
Articles, Fiction, Long, Telephone

Telephone – Directors Commentary

What is this? Well I rather enjoyed the discussion around the short story I posted the other month here called Airborne. After the story was published there was some conversation about how the story ended and I realised that perhaps it was uncomfortable for people to directly comment on the story posts on the blog and that perhaps it would be easier if there was a post that described the writing process and that would help attract comment.I wrote the first part of Telephone about a year and a half ago when something similar to the opening scene happened to me. Katherine and I were out at an exhibition and at the end of the exhibition Katherine was looking around the gift shop and I found a bench to rest on. It was actually really cold rather than hot and a woman sat down next to me and was desperately looking through her pockets for a phone. I suggested that she try calling her phone and she said she must have left it at the estate agents she’d been at. That was it. As she walked away I thought about how if I had offered to call her she would have got hold of my number and so some kind of kernel of a story was born.

So I had some vague notes about the story and then at some point around July 2010 I worked it into the first part of Part 1. Up until this line – “There is no ringing from her jacket. I put the phone to my ear it is ringing… Somewhere.”

I had always envisioned this as something of a four part story but I wrote that first half of part one in a night when I had written a lot of other articles and I ran out of time. I think I was trying to give myself an excuse to end it as a little bit of an ultrashort. But luckily I wasn’t really satisfied with that so I saved it in my drafts folder.

In January this year the story popped back into my head and I pulled it up while in Goring-on-sea train station. There is something nice and bleak about seaside towns in winter and that informed my writing I’m sure. I seem to remember that when I first considered the story it was going to be a scary action based thriller type story. The sort of thing where the woman turned out to be a spy or something and where our hero ended up being dragged into an adventure against his will. And I’m pretty sure, but I can’t remember the details, but I think the woman with the phone was going to be supernatural in some way. Maybe you would have preferred that story. But as chance would have it I had just written Airborne and so I was on the supernatural rebound.

There was something of the realism of description in Airborne that I’d enjoyed writing and so I kind of kept that bit. I briefly considered turning the story back to the incidents original cold but I decided that I was happy with hot oppression rather than cold isolation. And considering how cold it was I was quite happy to go on a hot holiday in my head.

I wrote the rest of part 1 and half of part 2 on the train. A rewrite of everything so far and the second half of part two happened in a pub. A pub which overlooks a coffee shop. You can, it seems, look out of the window and stare straight into the coffee shop and they don’t seem to see you – very handy for a writer. I was waiting for a friend to join me and so the waiting elements got added throughout.

And then…. Airborne was published and we started talking about it. I’m quite used to editing, I know it can cause blocks for some writers, some writers start second guessing everything. I’m one of them, I know. But in this case the pieces were unrelated and so it didn’t really affect things… But…

I had written that last bit of Part 2 just before Airborne was published:

“I’m glad you could make it.”
“I thought Sarah would never leave.”
“So did I.”

And this is what stopped me. I wondered then about what happened next. I had originally had quite a keen idea of the plot when it was going to be a mysterious adventure. But now it had turned out to be quite different. But then this last line presented a tricky question.

It invited some kind of suggestion of complicity. That had been the only thing in my mind at the time. But now I worried that this might also suggest that this was going to move into some kind of spy story or something like that. Having just published an article where we were talking about the lingering impact of last lines I thought it would be interesting to see what you thought. I wondered if this might mean that you thought they were in on something together and that that something was external to the story so far. Or if you thought it might be that, as intended, it was supposed to make you think that perhaps Sarah was right and these two were having an affair.

At this point I seem to have decided that I didn’t know what was coming next. Suddenly I was reading it as a reader. Where they complicit? Had the meeting in the shoe shop been a trick on Sarah and the reader? I didn’t know. Was that a good direction to go?

I thought about writing this article – and then realised that I would probably mention the other style of story and then started thinking about if it might have been better to make this more actiony. I had written a story with a lot of pauses in it – I thought. I reread part one and two again and decided that I liked the air in the story. The space that had been left between things. I decided I wanted to keep that and preserve it.

A question inevitably arises at this juncture – what is the point of this story? Why should the reader be interested? I try and convince myself sometimes that it is interesting enough to just live inside the characters head. Maybe I was putting too much pressure on the story? Should I just stop the story after part two?

Several people had said Airborne had gone on too long, maybe I didn’t need to add the weight of a point on the story?

I decided to just start writing part three about these two in the bar. I had liked the interplay in part one so I figured that could nicely come back. But I wanted to add our main characters detachment from part two.

This pulled things forward and I decided to avoid describing anything of a sordid nature. Which I think has to be the right way to go. Anything you say about any specifics is going to be so cringeworthy that it isn’t worth reading. Personally I included kissing in this. But I wanted that to happen while we were there, rather than between parts, so we knew something was happening while we were waiting for part four. I didn’t want you to leave having to wonder how the steps had been taken, or importantly who had led who up the steps.

But maybe you’d have rather had explicit detail, or even just more detail? I worried about cliche more than anything else, but maybe that leaves us without enough meat on the story?

I am trying to remember where the idea for the ending of the story came from but i’m not sure. I can remember finding myself struggling with how to start part three, but knowing how part four ended. I was sorely tempted to write the end of part four at one point and then somehow work backwards. This isn’t something that’s ever worked particularly well for me so I decided that I wouldn’t do that.

So I’m not sure where the idea came from exactly but suddenly there it was. I am pretty certain that I didn’t have the ending in place when I started. But I think it was there before I got to the end of part 2.

So. What did you think? How did it hang together for you? Do you feel it was satisfying? Should I have left it at the end of part 2? Or would you have rather the promise of the opening had led to an action adventure story?

Please don’t hold back.

Nov 17 2011
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Fiction, Long, Telephone

Telephone – Part 4

She was already gone. Before I had fallen asleep I had wondered if she would wake me. I guessed she wouldn’t and she hadn’t. I think I liked that.I got up and padded into the kitchen. It was already too hot. I opened the window and stepped onto the balcony. It was cooler but you could sense the heat coming. I remembered something about not opening the windows in the day. But I knew I always felt stifled without fresh air.

Back in the kitchen I got the cold pleasure of reaching in the freezer for the can of coffee. I poured the cold water in the machine, put the coffee in the filter and put the coffee back. The smell hits you pretty quick. You almost start waking up when you hear the liquid fall in the warm jug. You wake up in anticipation of the coffee.

I walked back to the balcony with a cup and started smoking. This is the time, I tell myself, every day, that I do my best thinking. I actually just watch traffic. I hope it isn’t my best thinking.

I drain my cup and think about going in for some more. I stop myself. I want to hold on to this, before whatever is coming comes. Even now as I remember this, I feel I knew at this moment. This was the moment when I began to realise, to guess, that I had been betrayed.

It wasn’t when Sarah’s lawyer showed me the photos. It was when I stood there on the balcony and that’s my problem.

I apologise too much, I over think everything, so I say sorry before I ever did anything. I never give myself any damn credit. And so I knew, as I thought about what had happened, that I couldn’t have got somebody like that to come back with me. There must have been an angle for her. I knew it. So that’s when I knew. Or that’s when I convinced myself I knew.

And I’m not sure I’m happy about that. Even if I was right, that lack of self confidence, meant I probably created the circumstances that made it possible. When I’d stepped out on to the balcony I hadn’t realised, but I knew that when I walked back inside I would be admitting that I knew. So I wanted to stay outside more than I wanted that next cup of coffee. That next cup of coffee meant admitting I knew everything was about to change. Maybe I did do my best thinking out on that balcony?

Nov 16 2011
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Fiction, Long, Telephone

Telephone – Part 3

How did she know Sarah had been in? How did she know who Sarah was? How did she know I had wanted Sarah to leave?”I didn’t used to?”
“Of course you did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Of course you used to want her to go out. That’s what happens in a healthy relationship. You want to be together so much sometimes you crave the other person going out. Maybe just so you can have a break, maybe just so you have a chance to miss them.”When had the change come? I had wanted more space at one point. I remembered feeling suffocated by love. She started talking again, and I realised I didn’t know her name.

“I gave you back that feeling. I gave you back the feeling of wanting her to leave.”
“What’s your name?”
“What’s yours?” she said.

Neither of us answered. I drank my shot and took a pull on my beer.

There was a pinball machine in the corner of the bar near where I was sitting. This was not coincidental. Somebody had just started playing and the noise of the play rattled over the music. I looked at the guy playing – he looked like he was having a good time. But I guessed he was like me when I played. I was trying to remember how things were when I had played as a kid, then it had been pure adventure and joy and now it was mindless brain-numbing reaction.

I found myself speaking, “I am so sorry for myself. I don’t know how to…”
“I think you probably need to shut up. I don’t just mean out loud I mean… If your brain is saying the things your face is expressing then I certainly don’t want to hear them and neither should you.”
“Should I just pretend life’s not happening to me? Am I supposed to just check out and not experience anything?”
“Idiot. That’s what you’ve been doing. You’re fully checked out. Teach me how to play pinball.”
“That guy’s playing.”
“He hasn’t got any quarters on the glass.”
“You don’t sound like you need lessons.”

Her forced jollity was annoying me. I was happy being sad.

I mean that, I… What Sarah had done to me had meant I had got a chance to earn the right to wallow. People were supposed to feel sorry for me. I was happy with this arrangement.

“I know how games work, not this, teach me pinball.”

I looked up at her, she seemed serious and I’m a pushover.

“You really don’t know how to play?” I asked.

She turned to the bartender, “Two more beers here”.

“No,” she said, looking at me, but checking for her beers, “I don’t think I ever have.”

I showed her the flippers, and I thought, ‘maybe’. But when she pulled the spring, the way she slammed it back, gave away that this wasn’t her first time.

I felt better for that somehow. She’d lied, but she’d lied to make me feel better.

The evening was just starting too cool off. The doors at the front of Eldon’s were propped open with fire extinguishers and the cooler air was mixing with the heat inside. I felt that cooler air on my face as I watched the lights of the back board jangle and blink.

“I thought you were supposed to be teaching me?”

I looked back down at the table and for a moment I found it hard to focus.

“Sorry.”
“Stop apologising.”

The ball she was playing dropped down the gutter. I’d missed the whole thing.

I looked at her in the strange coloured light. There was certainly something striking about her. The breeze gently moved a strand of hair that was caught on the corner of her lip.

“Sorry,” I said, ignoring her insistence, “I”m not really with it tonight. Maybe another time.”
“There isn’t going to be another time.”
“No?”
“No. This is a moment to seize.”
“I’m not really sure that I’m very good at that kind of thing.”
“You just need a little shove, I’m sure.”

She was standing very close to me. She slipped one hand around my neck and placed the other on my chest, and suddenly I remembered what I was supposed to do.

Afterwards we walked back to the bar. I had thought I would smile uncontrollably but that wasn’t how I felt. What was this feeling? I felt like I do sometimes at a wonderful restaurant, you look at the menu and everything looks great, so many interesting things to choose from so you don’t want to choose anything for fear of making a mistake.

“You think too much,” she said.
“Two more beers, two more shots.”

[This is part three of a four part story. A new part will be published each day this week, and will be followed by a directors commentary.]

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